KIRKUS REVIEW

Scenes from the class struggle, Gangnam-style.

Grandpa is convinced that the Japanese, who have not ruled Korea
since 1945, are bugging his phone. Pop has taken to calling Grandpa “the old
man.” Grandpa is old, of course, born in 1916, but that’s no reason to rub it
in—it’s just a sign of the coldness and disrespect that has settled in between
the generations. “I’m not trying to make an ethical point here,” insists the protagonist of Kim’s story “The
Country Where the Sun Never Rises,” whose day consists of work, sleep, and
stopping at the corner store for a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of soju,
and a lottery ticket—the cigarettes for Pop, the booze for Grandpa, and the
lottery ticket for the young man, desperate for a way out. Kim’s characters are
much put upon, long enduring, and discontented no matter what rung of the
social ladder they’re on. In “Ninety-Nine Percent,” an ad writer is convinced
that he’s seen his well-heeled, abrasive boss somewhere before—but where? Both
boss and writer lock into a weird head butting that hinges on the elevation of
the Jungfrau, the Swiss alp that speaks volumes about “new market segments that
we can explore.” In the world Kim limns, people are commodities, and those who
can afford it are slaves to whatever fashion happens to be current; in “The
Runner,” a yuppie’s girlfriend turns up “wearing a hoodie and a denim
mini-skirt with black knee-socks and expensive, imported running shoes,” guided
to her look by a Japanese fashion magazine. So are the Japanese bugging her phone,
too? That would be the least of the conflicts that unfold, conflicts on which
Kim’s elegant vignettes turn.

Kim opens an intriguing window into modern South Korean society,
a slice of the world that is confoundingly different from ours—but also much
the same.

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